So last Tuesday J.B and I were sent out on a story about the Food Blitz in Central Islip. The Story it’s self went off as I saw it without a hitch. The exciting thing about this story was I was able to try to use handle held for the first time in an actual story. Besides it being incredibly hot I ran into my first camera mishap which required a phone call to the news room only to find out the blackness in the camera was a result of me being in between two filters. Lesson learned on that one. After we returned and we did the show it was time for class which was interesting for me since it was camera work. During the class I got some great tips Gary on how to improve on hand-held which I hope to incorporate in future stories.

On Thursday I was assigned to go to the Mineola train station for a story Tania was covering called, Rap the Gap”. On this particular day I interacted with other cameramen and reporters, and it was a very positive experience. I was able to get a direct Audio feed from one stations camera, and the cameraman from News 12 used to report for LI News, and gave a lot of helpful advice. The biggest issue for the day was getting enough B-roll of the trains passing by between interviews.(They only came by about every 20 minutes, and we had only 90 Minutes to complete all of the footage). Another learning experience I had was transporting the camera fast enough between two different locations, so that I did not miss any footage. I found that bystanders were very helpful and were always holding doors, and were very friendly overall. The Rap song about the Gap on the Long Island Railroad made the story very fun, and created a very open atmosphere making everyone very open to interviews

A few weeks ago I was assigned to cover the camera work for a story in Great Neck with one of the reporters from LI News Tonight. The story was based on the damage done from a “tornado-like” storm in the area. There were many obstacles that happened throughout the shoot ranging from the Macro button on the lens to the pan lock on the tripod. But overall, I felt I got a fair amount of decent footage to cover enough B-roll for the story.

When we first arrived in Great Neck, I could not believe the amount of damage the storm had caused. It was also very sporadic, in regards to what was damaged. There would be one street with no visible damage except for one house on the entire road. There were pieces of sidewalk ripped from the ground, next to a playground left unscathed. There were many areas for B-roll, but many of the areas were in high traffic or too uneven for tripod use, so I had to manage to try to be as still as possible with the camera on my shoulder.

After getting a decent amount of B-Roll we headed to some of the damaged houses to get interviews from some residents. This is when my first obstacle occurred. While I was setting up the shot I found that I could not track the lens. After about 10 minutes of confusion I realized the Macro button was pressed on the front of the camera. When it was un-pressed all of the focus issues were alleviated.

Overall, I learned a lot about minor camera issues that can really cause a lot of problems, and now I will know how to fix one more problem when out in the field.